Seonggak聖覺
1Seonggak
聖覺，菁州人。史失其氏族。不樂世間名官，自號為居士，依止一利縣法定寺。後歸家養母，以老病難於蔬食，割股肉以食之。及死，至誠為佛事資薦。大臣角干敬信、伊飡周元等，聞之國王以熊川州向德故事，賞近縣租三百石。
Seonggak was a man of Cheongju. The histories have lost his clan. He took no pleasure in the names and offices of the world, and he called himself a layman, and he settled at Beopjeongsa in Illi county.
Afterward he went home and cared for his mother. She was old and ill and had trouble eating vegetable food, so he cut the flesh of his thigh and gave it to her to eat. When she died, he held Buddhist rites with the utmost sincerity to help her on the road beyond.
The great ministers Gyeongsin, who held the rank of gakgan, and Juwon, who held the rank of ichan, and others heard of it and reported it to the king. Following the earlier case of Hyangdeok of Ungcheonju, he was rewarded with three hundred seom of grain from a nearby county.
2The historian's comment — on cutting the flesh of the thigh
論曰：宋祁《唐書》云：「善乎，韓愈之論也！曰：『父母疾，烹藥餌，以是為孝，未聞毁支體者也。苟不傷義，則聖賢先衆而為之。是不幸因而且死，則毁傷滅絶之罪，有歸矣，安可旌其門，以表異之？』雖然，委巷之陋，非有學術禮義之資，能忘身以及其親，出於誠心，亦足稱者，故列焉。」則若向德者，亦可書者乎！
Kim Busik comments.
The Tang shu of Song Qi says, "Good indeed is the judgment of Han Yu. He said, 'When a father or mother is ill, one boils medicine and offers it, and this is held to be filial. I have not heard of injuring the body. If it truly did no harm to what is right, the sages and the worthy would have done it before all others. If a man is unlucky and dies of it as well, then the guilt of injuring his body and cutting off his line comes back upon him. How then can a gate of honor be raised at his door to set him apart?' Yet in the meanness of a back lane, where there is no store of learning or of rites and right conduct, to be able to forget the body so that it reaches one's parent comes out of a sincere heart, and this too is worth speaking of, and so it is set down here."
Then is one such as Hyangdeok also a man who may be written of?